What Defines You?

When I was younger, I was a skinny, awkward kid, but my role models were pot smoking, long hairs in rock bands. So, of course I grew my hair, bought a '68 Volkswagen bus and learned how to play guitar. But the voices in my head didn't stop: you're not good enough, people think you're stupid, you're too skinny and awkward....what's wrong with you?

For years I chased my own image in rebels and street punks. I projected the image of cool outwardly, but on the inside I was shaking and afraid.

I felt like a phony, a fraud.

I could no longer stand who I was, and I didn't know who I wanted to be. I had lost touch with my own voice and I was lost.

The voices in our head, the models we think we are following, the expectations we don't know how to live up to. They all take their toll. I felt the weight and the pressure until one summer day it finally broke me. Too much.